Not really sure what to talk about, I just wanted to talk about SOMETHING so this post could be interesting…..or not.

College Prom was last night, I didn’t go because I couldn’t get off work and was notably lacking in money when the tickets were on sale so yeah. Wasn’t too put out though, spent the evening eating junk food with my sister watching ‘Rent’ on DVD, which involves notably less public humiliation at my dancing (though still some), less sweaty ill-fitting tux in a hot rooms with YMCA being played (even though they were on a boat sailing over the Thames which sounds awesome) and less sea-sickness (never experienced it before but that would’ve been the worst place to start). Yeah, I may be purposely painting it as a hassle so that I don’t feel as bad about not going but I know that going would’ve involved a lot of effort and bullshit and didn’t really think it was worth it.

In my bid to save ‘1984′ for Malta and what’s left of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ for work, I’ve been reading John Barrowman’s autobiography to pass time, he started with getting the call saying he’s gonna play Captain Jack in Doctor Who, thus meeting the reason that fanboys like me bought the book straight away. I’m generally a fan of musicals (hence watching ‘Rent’) so that’s not the only reason, but I vaguely remember him in ‘Live and Kicking’ so it’s all good for me.

Michael Jackson has died. My sister sent me a link to the live BBC News coverage saying he was in a coma and my mum prophecised he’d be dead by morning, so was awoken next morning by my mum almost gleefully telling me that she’d been vindicated. Odd thing is that I’m too young to remember his hits (though he has released some in my lifetime) and just old enough to remember the weird headlines and the trial a few years ago, so in my mind he’s less of an artist and more of an oddity. Faked his death? Well of course all the rumours have sprung up and, were I more paranoid, I would believe it. Certainly, there’s some convincing evidence to suggest it, but to me that’s simply a load of coincidences. I would like to have worked at Ticketmaster on the morning after he died to hear all the calls for his cancelled London gigs. I suppose I have Thriller in my head all week so he’s clearly gone out with a bang……..

…….not a whimper, as TS Eliot once described the end of the world. I’ve been trying to read some of his poems but really don’t understand them!!!!!!!!!! Need to go back to college and speak to my old English teacher for help.

Windows 7 pricing was announced recently, and I also heard that people who buy Vista in the next few months get a Windows 7 license totally free. This was just after I ordered my mum’s laptop from Dell (she wanted a pink one) with Home Premium, so maybe I’ll get lucky or maybe I won’t, but if she does get free 7 licensing, I’ll take that! She’ll be happy enough with Vista, give her iTunes and a web browser and she’s happy (oh and remote access software too so that I can fix it when needed). I can’t really remember how much Vista was when it came out but I’m sure it was less than 7 is, here’s a rundown.

Hmm, pricey.

Just returned from Guildford, to which I went for no other reason than to avoid spending my day off work sitting on my ass watching YouTube videos, given the suprising speed at which I ploughed through To Kill a Mockingbird (am currently in the last 50 pages) I realised that I’d need something new to take to Malta.

Went into Waterstones and found 1984 by George Orwell which had been my original idea for a good book, realised it was on a 3for2 offer so had a look around. I also found TS Eliot’s Selected Poems on the same offer, which I deemed to be fate, and when I couldn’t find anything else interesting on offer, I got John Barrowman’s Autobiography ‘Anything Goes’ (which is the song and musical referenced in this post’s title) because it was free and who doesn’t love Captain Jack?

Of course, I can’t start reading any of them before I finish To Kill a Mockingbird because of my own personal rule. I’m not sure what the correct term for literary monogamy is………bibliography?

Wimbledon is good this year, it’s on whenever I get back from work so I watch it while I relax. It’s interesting that all the tabloids had a headline going “A British woman wins a tennis match at wimbledon!” in utmost horror and surprise as if women are incapable, then again 50 years ago she would’ve been socially shunned for a sports career instead of a husband and kids………two hundred years ago she would’ve been accused off being a witch! It’s fucked up how Andrew Murray has said it was unacceptable that no other british people are left besides him, get over yourself! Also, that 15 year old girl who got knocked out in the first round, her mother blamed her Wimbledon failure on her recent GCSE’s, in my opinion she should get her priorities straight, not matter how good I was at something I’d still take a break from it to sort out my compulsory exams in case it doesn’t work out. I mean what were the odds she was going to win the whole thing anyway and it’s not like she can’t enter next year. Good luck to her for Wimbledon 2010!

No word on the rumored Matt Smith filming pics, ah well.

As a nineties kid, I haven’t had to deal with wired networks in years. For as long as I can remember I have had a wireless network in my house connecting up my netbook, ps3 and other devices, connecting to the internet and streaming media via the router.

Given that next year when I’m at uni, there’s one network access point which COULD be connected to a wireless router, but even if I tack on security to it it may still be too insecure for me to use without being paranoid. Thus, I am going to read up on connecting wired networks, given that I have enough Cat6 cable hanging around my room to choke an ostrich.

Anyone want to offer advice?

Is it really only two weeks since I finished college, bloody hell.

As for the aforementioned Doctor Who rumour, it’s not true (bloody knew it) according to this, then again it’s unusual for the BBC to actually come out and deny specific rumours………..hmm.

I’ve managed to scrape together a meagre 8 hours of overtime next week and I’m going to cover Xavia’s checkout shift at the end of July (she’s skydiving apparentely) at some point. Should I take the extra money or make her cover one of my pain-in-the-ass friday night shifts? Hmm……..

Nothing partcularly new in tech world, other than i hear tell of a new iPod Touch, hmm. So I will say goodbye!

Hmm.

I got told at work that as a result of my stealing the overtime book and choosing my own hours at work (not just me admitedly) they’ve put a selection of hours that are available and won’t allow people to choose their own. So my summer long regime to make as much money as humanely possible lasted a meagre two-weeks, ah well.

As for the cooking show name, out of the………one……….suggestion, we have a winner. That one. A friend from college, Paul Dugdale, suggested “Baked!” with particular emphasis on the exclamation mark which I like, it’s also nice to find out that I’m not the only person who ever reads this blog so splendid.

Alright, now the important stuff. My iPhone contemplation continues with me finding out that a 2-year contract with O2 at £35/month will give me a good number of minutes and texts and a FREE iPhone 3G or £80 for an iPhone 3G S, I’m not sure which I’ll go for given that my S review was wholly disparaging, but just for the sake of having the latest tech £80 might be well worth it. My only main gripes about it now is the lack of browser flash player (to which I imagine there are abundant work-arounds) and the infuriating on-screen keyboard, though from what I hear it’s easy to get used to it (if I can adjust from a huge inspiron keyboard to a miniscule eeepc keyboard this shouldn’t be a problem) and now that it’s got landscape typing, when the keys get a bit bigger, this might not be an issue.

In either case, I’m not going to do anything until I get back from Malta in mid-July, mainly because I won’t really know all the ins and outs if I get one now so might forget to disable some data sending application which costs me stupid data roaming charges. Which is good in that I can wait for more reviews and bug-fixes and the like to come out before I decide which way I’m inclined. Speaking of Malta, Becky told me yesterday that she reakons the 5 hotel rooms (in which the 10 of us are sharing in pairs) will have one king-sized bed, which doesn’t bother me too much but the guy I’m sharing a room with is somewhat less open-minded than me so I hope we have seperate beds just to avoid him giving me a speech about “his own personal space” and references to invasion.

As per usual with me, before I do anything iPhone related I’ll need to get the general concensus and opinion of everyone I have ever friggin met, just because I’m weird in that I can never make a decision (particularly tech related) without getting the input of whoever’s nearest at the time, something that Duggers and Dave have had to suffer with the past two years, sorry about that.

Not much else in the world of tech, reports about problems and bugs in OS 3.0 and the 3G S. Something about ATM’s getting Wi-Fi for some obscure reason and methinks I smell the return of Steve Jobs. In Doctor Who, I’m going to keep wary tomorrow for set pictures of Matt Smith starting as The Doctor. Into the last 100 pages of To Kill a Mockingbird which, along with how I usually end up doing things, I’ll probably read more at work tomorrow and then kill the last 50 pages in one sitting.

Night all!

UPDATE: Just went by i09 for more Doctor Who spoilers, which I both hate and love in equal measure, and found an interesting (but probably untrue) rumour, given that this sort of thing occurs so often and I doubt we’ll see Matt Smith’s Doctor pre-regeneration, click here but be wary of spoilers young Jedi……………….good god I’m a nerd.

Ok, so Top Gear’s The Stig is actually Michael Schumacher…………………………awesome. Though I hope they replace him now if they’ve revealed his identity, having The Stig being some anonymous suited racer was quite cool. I think (and thanks to Wikipedia I now KNOW) that they replaced ‘Black Stig’ a few years ago when he was outed so I guess they will.

Went to Joe’s party last night at The Fountain (which is about a ten minute walk from my house so awesome), and twas damn good. We were talking about the time in every person’s life when they get absolutely teapotted (you can use any word with -ed on the end to mean drunk, alarm-clocked, steam-trained, toefluffed, etc.) and then they’re really sensible about drink, in this statement some of us were used as examples, including me. I felt quite smug at this point to think that I was considered sensible about drink when I haven’t really had an event when I’ve gotten totally netbooked (I’m using things on my desk now, granted).

Not a particularly big day in tech this weekend, improvement in iPlayer radio quality has put yet another nail in the DAB coffin. I went into 02 today to look at prices for a new iPhone, my current phone bill varies but is usually around £25/month. For £29/month I can get a contract with a crappy number of minutes and texts or for £35/month I can get more so probs worth it. BUT it’s that much for a contract and £100 for the handset on an iPhone 3G………………..NOT an iPhone 3G S. However, having re-read my own review of the iPhone 3G S and considering that a lot of those features are available either through apps or OS 3.0 it’s probably not going to make much of a difference, but I’ll wait around for more reviews for it to work out if there’s anything between them that makes it worth an extra £100 for the handset and an extra………I’m not sure per month.

Jeremy Clarkson just walked into a bar in a posh hotel covered in locomotive coal soot and a jumpsuit, met by a clean James May and being revived by beer…….who actually won a race……….and Richard Hammond’s legs are dead…….sweet.

I developed and wrote this program a few months ago but I made a mistake and couldn’t fix it, I just copied the code and rebuilt it. I tried using the publish function on Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 and here’s the folder created, if you want to test it you should be able to on here by downloading and unzipping this folder and running ’setup’. If it works or doesnt work let me know and also tell me what you think of the program if it works.

I don’t really understand the complexities of using VB so it probably won’t work this way for installing. Even if it does running it properly requires that you have all 5 mentioned browsers installed in the default way, I think it only works on Windows Vista but I haven’t had a chance to test it given that it doesn’t work on Linux. For Windows 7, it works for Opera, Chrome and Firefox because IE and Safari aren’t supported on Windows 7 RC……..oddly.

AllBrowsers 2.0

Also, I won’t be trying another video blog.

Ma

Here’s my first attempt to do a video blog, as you can see (and hear thanks to the magic of video) it was a rambling mess that I must remember to plan BEFORE I hit record.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3g88K98rIA&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00]

A pretty unimportant day, did 8 hours of checkout overtime and then met people. Had a milestone today in that I managed to cook spag bol without destroying my netbook again, it was good. Met up with people later on.